WhenKittensATK Posted August 16, 2011 Posted August 16, 2011 (edited) I recently picked up my Uncle's old Dell Dimension 8250 and decided to recycle it as a file server. I grabbed a Windows Server 2003 R2 copy from MSDNAA and tried to install it on a SATA drive that I'm using with a SATA to IDE adapter (since the motherboard doesn't support SATA). Windows installs normally as it would up after it copies the disc files to the hard drive and restarts the computer for the first time. When it tries to boot to the hard drive to continue installing, all I get is a black screen with a blinking cursor. I did test a CentOS install and it booted into CentOS, just fine Solutions I tried: Recovery console commands: fixboot, fixmbr, chkdsk Remove all devices, but hard drive Set hard drive to boot first SeaTools Hard Drive Diagnostics came up clean Tested the Win Server '03 install disc in VMWare and it works Solutions to try (tomorrow): Update BIOS Give up and use CentOS or FreeBSD (I'm not a Linux person, so this beyond me. Especially when they are mostly command line operated. Windows Server 2008 and beyond are not an option as they require 64-bit processors.) Edited August 16, 2011 by Krazyxazn Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorri317 Posted August 21, 2011 Posted August 21, 2011 One problem I had when downloading a copy of windows 7 from msdnaa was that the download was bad. No matter how many times I tried it the disk that I would burn the iso image to never worked. So i had them send me a copy and didn't have a problem. It might be the same problem, windows would copy the files from the disk to the hard drive then it would reboot. When it rebooted it would go to the "log on" screen but nothing would come up for me to continue the install. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhenKittensATK Posted August 21, 2011 Posted August 21, 2011 So i had them send me a copy and didn't have a problem. You mean like a physical CD copy? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorri317 Posted August 21, 2011 Posted August 21, 2011 Yeah. I think it was like $10 maybe. Once i used that it installed fine. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhenKittensATK Posted August 21, 2011 Posted August 21, 2011 I'll give it a try, thanks. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorri317 Posted August 21, 2011 Posted August 21, 2011 No problem and let me know if that works out for you. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhenKittensATK Posted August 26, 2011 Posted August 26, 2011 Just looked on MSDNAA and it seems they no longer offer a hard copy option. Only saw download options. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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